Plant Science

Throughout their married lives, baseball star Gaspar Bethlen's wife gave him a lovingly crafted mystery every year for Christmas. Solving the clues led him to his present, but the mysteries themselves were the true gift. Now, Beth has died, leaving Gasper a wreck of a man. But Beth left behind a clue, the beginning of one final Christmas mystery, and it's much more than either of them expected.

This is the second in the Modern Manufacturing Case Studies series of three books. If you have an interest in how things are made, this collection of impactful manufacturing case studies is for you! Take a tour with the author inside more than 30 world-class facilities to experience the most remarkable innovations and highly sophisticated robotics and automation in action. Capture a front-row seat to top-brand, big-budget manufacturing in action with complex machines communicating with other machines. However, you can also learn from small-to-medium size manufacturers.

Culture Gap: Towards a New World in the Yalakom Valley tells the story of a two year sojourn at the Camelsfoot Commume in a remote valley in BC, Canada. The challenges and privations, the joys and adventures of rural communal living, form the backdrop to the human drama the author recounts. Judith and Kip Plant's family includes her children; Willie takes to the new life, but his sisters feel the strong pull of the life they left behind. Meanwhile Fred, the inspiration for the commune, stricken with cancer, is dying.

Freedom and equality are the watchwords of American democracy. But like justice, freedom and equality are meaningless when there is no corresponding practical application of the ideals they represent. Physical, bodily liberty is fundamental to every American’s personal sovereignty. And yet, millions of Americans—including author Deborah Plant’s brother, whose life sentence at Angola Prison reveals a shocking current parallel to her academic work on the history of slavery in America—are deprived of these basic freedoms every day.

Your career has wound down, the kids have moved, and your schedule is clear...for the next 30 years. In your youth, you cared about people and planet Earth, and you had grand visions of changing the world. At some point, those passions and that sense of purpose got buried under diapers and the 9-5. Still, that old "you" remains alive. Now, with the rest of your life ahead, you can be the change and make this next stage of your life the most powerful yet.